#they only like the ones generally considered cool

[signanothername]

penny for your thoughts on dadmare and more fandom takes??

🪙

Tbh Anon you have to be a bit more specific with what fandom takes you want my opinion on cause I genuinely can’t think of any shshhshshs

But for dadmare… hmmmmmmm

It’s… I have complicated feelings about this trope

Like on one hand, I love the exploration of dadmare as a concept and would genuinely love for it to be explored in a deep meaningful way

On the other hand… the fandom never actually explores it in a deep meaningful way so everytime I come across dadmare a part of me dies inside

Like the fandom immediately settles for “tired generic dad trying to control his rowdy kids” and i’m here like :’)

Like i’d love for dadmare to actually be explored in depth, like the shift for Nightmare from being a bitch to being “dadmare” how does Nightmare deal with MTT in a dadmare way while staying true to his character

How did Nightmare develop and change and how does he feel about being “dadmare”, does he struggle to face the consequences of the abuse he put MTT through and how does he make it up to them? but like also for the love of god you can explore this trope without having MTT act like children, they’re literally +30 old men and you don’t have to infantilize them for the trope to work

Also hot take but everytime MTT call Nightmare “dad” unironically an angel loses its wings, it just ruins the vibes for me, like dadmare is a trope yet people genuinely take it too literally, which again just plays into the infantilization of adult characters

Hell, relationships aren’t one sided, how does MTT feel about Nightmare’s shift, do they trust him or do they take it as an opportunity to escape, do they hate Nightmare but warm up to him or do they not care for his change of heart

Like here’s an example, when people write dadmare, they write his ability to absorb MTT’s negativity to relieve them of their pain right? Ok cool, I LOVE THAT! What I hate tho is the fact every single person in the gang seems to “trust” Nightmare with their life and how all of them react the same way

Basically the MTT are reduced to cardboard cutouts that are literally just duplicates of each other, they all have the exact same reaction to anything Nightmare does, like you’re actually gonna sit here and tell me that Killer trusts Nightmare with his soul????? What did Nightmare do to earn that trust, and Killer isn’t a trusting person to begin with

Hell what did Nightmare do in the first place? Even when the interpretation of Nightmare is that he’s kind from the beginning and that he “saved them”, do you honestly believe that Murder would genuinely feel saved? Are you gonna tell me Horror is gonna stay and live with Nightmare by his own volition and abandon his brother where he only goes back to “visit” him? Since when has Nightmare become more important to Horror than Papyrus?

Hell since when can Murder, Killer and Horror communicate well?? Since when were they super close to each other and since when was Murder ok with Killer’s existence considering his very dangerous Determination and Chara-like nature?

Since when was Killer super emotional in stage 2 and since when was his other stages completely forgotten to fit the perfectly happy and healthy family that the fandom is trying to force onto these obviously unhealthy characters with unhealthy relationships and destructive behaviors

Like don’t get me wrong, people are obviously allowed to explore their fave characters however they like, but my point is, I can’t enjoy the trope of Dadmare even tho i want to, cause the fandom just settles for very straight forward answers to every problem, every little problem is immediately resolved with a snap of a finger

Everything is happy and rainbows and roses and any problems the MTT have they just go to dadmare and suddenly they’re no longer self destructive cause dadmare immediately saves them cause he always has the answer!!!

And i’m here still waiting for an interpretation of dadmare that actually pulls me in and actually interests me like

[adoreu-carat]

Hoping that this is a safe space for a veteran carat.

I’m I the only one that thinks that carats who only use twitter and newer stans have WAY more different opinions in general and higher standards??

Like, this may sound so dumb but whenever they are criticizing something about svt, most of them compare it to other groups, for example, saying things like “why can’t they do this like so and so” “why is pledis not doing this like so and so’s company” “I’m not gagging, it feels boring” “I looked at svt’s concept photos and sighed” like ?????

Why are they being so critical about it??? It’s one thing to say “Oh it wasn’t to my liking” or “I see it but it looks simple to me” instead of completely bashing the group and company and being so mean about it.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t like pledis either and I know they’ve made so many shitty decisions since before svt debuted but also I’ve been a kpop stan for more than a decade and I know, like many other stans, how those companies work, we know how comebacks work, it’s not great and it might never be.

Not one single company OR group is prefect.

So I really don’t get the hate for this comeback’s concept considering it’s the last one that it’s OT13 in who knows how long.

And that’s why I’m feeling so old because yes BACK IN THE DAY we had nothing like what we have today, back in they having 2 ver. of an album was already big, different versions and whole different designs of the albums not just a change of color was so cool, having like 300+ variations of photocards was WILD. And also having them available?? Being able to buy not just on the internet but in our own countries when back in the day the only option was buying from South Korea??? Like kpop in general has come so far and I feel like SOME stans are just too greedy and ungrateful.

So, unpopular opinion I gues?

[thenotoriousscuttlecliff]

The Snyderverse was a artistic hollow, emotionally stunted, intellectually shallow era of movies made by and for those who just want things to look badass, cool, and aggressively masculine.

[shima-draws]

So are we just playing “send Shima quick doodle prompts to shake off the rust”?

In that case, you can never go wrong with toothcup

AUGH...AUGUGHHG...

I haven't drawn them in YEARS thank you for this

Also like. I know initially my idea was that human Toothless could talk regularly like everyone else. But mute Toothless who can sign is also......so good......

This is Perry's fault for poisoning my brain /j

[tvckerwash]

I'm convinced the chorus trilogy gaslighted people into forgetting how everyone was characterized prior to miles being the main writer, to the detriment of literally everybody lmao

[claitea]

whoa guys did you see the new cards i really want alto's full art!!

made with this site! art without the text under the cut :D

[artsycooky13]

top 3 fave bbys in the burrito show (bonus SUPER LONG tags on how i feel bout the characters)

[skrunksthatwunk]

you go to a lesbian blog and find it says women only!! no men allowed!!! and go oh! excuse me, um, what about other lesbians? plenty of lesbians are genderqueer... and they go well, okay, go fuck yourself tim chop off your sweaty dick and stop calling yourself a lesbian. you do not have a dick, actually. you think about that fact often, even though it does you no good. you do not tell this person that.

you go to another lesbian blog and it says women only and you try again, and this time they change it to wlw + nblw only (non-men who love non-men :D). and you'll say hey i appreciate that but gender's not really that cut and dry for a lot of people. someone could be both a man and nonbinary, for instance. i just worry that you're looking at nonbinary as a generic third gender, or an extension of womanhood. i mean yeah you include nblw in your tags but all your posts are about pussy-havers exclusively. what's with that? and they say go fuck yourself you pervy man pretending to be a lesbian. you tried to sneak in but i won't let you.

so you go to a lesbian blog with a dozen or so posts about queer people needing to be more weird about it and you sigh in relief. but you still see the men dni. that's odd. hoping for the best, you say hey! i know you mean well but please maybe don't put men dni at the end of the lovely posts on your lesbian blog bc some lesbians are men. and they'll be like ok!! well you're allowed ;) and you say no that's not. no. some men are lesbians not just me. you think about your own dicklessness and wonder if that's why you were given entry. and you add that even if male lesbians are allowed, there's no indication of that. how would anyone know without asking? and they're like ohh gotcha gotcha well men dni + this is for sapphics only!! and you'll be like ok well that treats the concepts of men and sapphics as mutually exclusive identities and i just told you that's not true and you agreed with me so.. i don't think that solves our problem. and they're like. ok. fine. men dni but genderfluid and multigender people are allowed! and you're like no see that's. that's still the same thing.. you're saying the same thing just with different words. if you don't want men to interact but you're fine with multigender/genderfluid/etc ppl interacting then you either don't see them as Real Men (because they don't reach a standard of Full Manhood) or Complete Men (because they're only Part-Time Men), both of which suggest that they are, in some way, not men or less-than men, which is invalidating and defeats the point of the exception in the first place (accommodation) OR that you don't really mean the dni which is confusing and inconsistent and makes guydykes feel weird and uncomfortable and excluded from the lesbian space you're trying to cultivate. and they're like um. ok. so. cishet men dni? and you're like well i think that makes more sense, but what if someone identifies as both a cishet man and a sapphic? again, if we're trying to accommodate the genderfucky populace then that has to be a possibility that is considered. and they say god you people are never happy. what do you want me to do? what am i supposed to say to keep the right men out? and you pause. you empathize with the need for a space free from dudes trying to fuck you straight and feminine. dudes who watch lesbian porn and joke about what they'd do if they were allowed into girls locker rooms. who look at you like a piece of meat, and like someone who looks at women like pieces of meat in the same way he does. you get it. you know. you want a space where you can be sapphic, too. that's why you came to these blogs in the first place. you brace yourself and you say well i don't know that there are "right men" to keep out. i don't know that there's any single label that would accomplish whatever it is you're trying to accomplish. you could go for "sapphics only" or "queers only" and i think that might be the closest thing to what you want, but it's never going to be perfect. creating any exclusive space is going to shut out people you didn't account for, and the broader the label, the more people will be shut out that you didn't want to shut out. and what about people who don't know if they're allowed? what of questioning transbians, where are they supposed to go? and, frankly, i think i might rather my dykey posts get read and appreciated by a gay guy who sees me as a man than a woman who only sees me as a sacred womb, pure from male perversions or violence or whatever. i think community might just be more complex than a dni can handle. and they look at you and say i don't want to not have a dni. i think you're too permissive. you can't just "what about" or microlabel your way into everything. go fuck yourself, i bet you're not even a lesbian anyway. go find a real problem to get mad about.

you go to a lesbian blog. you ignore the men dni because you know you probably don't even count to them. or maybe you do count and, out of respect for your manhood, they'd shun you accordingly. you try to feel okay about that. you scroll past dozens of posts about mediocre men and gagging at straight friends' boyfriends and how gross and undeserving men are of the beautiful women they couple up with and how all women should be gay so they can get treated right and and and and and. you finally find a post about curling into someone you love and feeling at peace and try to lose yourself in it. you know that feeling is what unites you, what makes you belong. you try to focus on it. you think about carding your hands through a butch's hair or lacing fingers with a femme and feeling warm and loved and more yourself than you ever have before. like this is who you're meant to be. you read about lesboys and butch boytoys and genderfucky dykes and big hairy deep-voiced wonderful women (like you want to be someday, like you wish you could make yourself) and you try to ignore the men dni underneath each and every post. and you daydream about meeting someone kind and earnest at a lesbian bar even though you don't think any such bars exist within three states of you and you can't drink and don't want to drink because you need to be in control of yourself at all times so you don't fuck up like you're always about to and here in the nonexistent lesbian bar you feel wanted and safe and in good company. you picture your ideal, happiest self. it is a mistake. ideal-you has a goatee. not the mascara one you smear on and call drag even though you know it's not drag, not really, the beard you call drag because you think everyone would look at you sadly if you told them it was just to pretend you had something out of your reach. a beard that's soft and that you grew and that cannot be smudged away if you get too comfortable with it. the dream shatters. your people pull away from you, their scoffs mixing with the mind-numbing gay girl bedroom pop you learned to settle for just to have something that almost resembled you, they all pull away and turn their backs and do not look at you. you're too close to being a man now, even though you're the same amount of man as before. and they know you're not supposed to interact with men, not as you would with dykes, at least. and it sours. it's all your imagination, all in your head, but it sours.

you sigh. you think about how small you are. how short, how narrow, how feeble. how your voice pitches up when you talk to strangers because it's easier to speak quietly when it carries more, and because you're nervous. because it's a chore to talk, like everything is. you think about testosterone. you think about how your family would look at you, the questions they would ask, your answers they would only pretend to accept. the uncomfortable glances and whispered questions they'd try to hide from you. you think about how small you are, and how small you will always be. how you don't know of a way to fix it, but even if there was one, no one would want you anymore. you'd be the only one thinking it made you a cooler dyke. you think about how you don't even want a T-voice all the time, how you'll never be able to switch it at will, because you don't know how and can't bring yourself to figure it out. you think about how your throat closes around every hint of your own attraction. how wanting is perverse, how wanting is invasive, how wanting is embarrassing and too vulnerable so it must stay anonymous, as an online witness, and how you can barely manage to form or maintain friendships because your brain makes you pull away, always spinning out and struggling to recover from the simplest of interactions. how they'll all leave you and you won't chase after them at all and how that will hurt them. how stuck you get. how it looks like nothing's holding you back, how that frustrates everyone who thought you were going to be more than you were. the people you love who understand except when it comes to being ghosted, being shut out. how you don't want to hurt them. how you can't tell them that because you're stuck. how you turn to stone when touched, how you never reach out, how you lose your speech and can't look at people, how your autism is fun and sexy until it becomes real and you never see them anymore, how much you longed for someone who knew everything without you having to explain, and who loved you anyway. how unreasonable you know that is to expect of anyone. you think about that not-even-real lesbian bar. you think about how you still can't drive. how you can't leave your home on your own, without dragging somebody into helping you. how you can't leave your body. how you can't leave your manhood behind.

you think about finding another lesbian blog and ignoring everything. about skimming it for the parts you can juice some meaning from. the parts men ignore and don't understand, and how typical of you it is to do so. or the parts where you're not welcome and you should accept that, because it's for lesbians only. how you are a lesbian anyway. how you're meant to choose lesbian or man, how each is a betrayal of some kind to yourself or your people, your family, your lovely strangers, your rare friendly acquaintances. about the parts that tell you you're not wanted, that you're ugly and lazy and gross and insert yourself everywhere without even asking. about the parts that tell you you are hated, and how lesbians are above it all by rejecting men. how lesbians are each blessed miracles. about the parts that say you should be ashamed of being whatever twisted confused freak you are, of everything, of looking and wanting or not looking or not wanting, of picking and choosing instead of taking it all in with a smile. after all, shouldn't you take it? or is your ego too fragile, as men's so often are? aren't you tired? good. we're not here for your consumption. and we sure as hell don't want your company or "community" or whatever. didn't you read the sign? no boys allowed. and if you want to come in you have to make up your mind. as if you haven't told them the only answer you have. you're both. you're both.

you know you broke the rule by interacting.

but it gets lonely sometimes. you wonder if they know.

[sysig]

You’re so obvious, DAX (Patreon)

[elftwink]

one of the most infuriating things that happens in discussions about trans people is like, when a transphobe talks about how its just SOOOO easy to access gender affirming care, it's so easy to get on hrt or get referred for surgery etc... some of you dense motherfuckers respond to this by saying "no!!! it's not easy!!!! its so hard!!!" & listen. i KNOW that it IS HARD for many of us. and in many places it's getting harder. but tell me this: isn't the goal, eventually, to make it easy? not just easier than right now, but genuinely easy for a transgender person to access the care they need on whatever timeline they want, no matter how fast or slow? so if you spend all your time right now combating transphobia by insisting that transition is difficult and taxing and traumatizing, what are you going to do if and when it's none of those things? if there is no endless suffering and million hoops?

when someone says "it's too easy to transition" in order to justify their own transphobia, and you say "no it's not", you're also saying "if it were, your feelings would be justified". which is already kind of a terrible implication without taking into consideration that what most of these people mean by "too easy" is "possible". they mean that you can transition and they don't want you to. point blank. when you say it's difficult, they think "good. it should be harder". it will never be difficult enough to not be easy to them.

i am literally so sick & tired of all of us throwing each other under the bus in order to advocate for a future that is fucking miserable and awful. when someone tells you their nightmare scenario is transgender people being happy, you should not be responding to that by reassuring them that actually, transgender people are miserable and always have been and always will. when someone complains about how easy transition is you should say "good". we are never getting out of this fucking crab bucket if we're not only pulling each other down but also telling other people that pushing us back in would be fine if we were a little closer to the top.

[galacticlamps]

actually ascension needs its own post since that's the one with the most details to speculate over and im starved for soho talk so i will talk to myself if need be

First the cover again, because I kinda can't get over it:

my only thing is that I had been hoping we might get Lizbeth on a cover again since she's never been on one of the boxsets before, despite being the 2nd person credited on all 4 of them (even if that's just alphabetical, still, she's the only one of the four main characters who never makes the cover)

But letting that go...

I know we already kinda knew the brief for this one but damn I didn't expect it to go quite this hard. Maybe that's just because the Parasite & Ashenden covers were (comparatively) similarish to each other and I was so pleased with Unbegotten's, and then got so used to it as the placeholder for Ascension while they kept postponing it, I wasn't expecting anything this colorful or detailed or with what I can't help but register as Fun New Outfits even though these are still like, pretty damn basic as far as costumes go. Still, it's a different vibe from everyone in suits and trenchcoats on every cover, technically. (Oh the woes of being an audio fan such that two characters owning sweaters actually does qualify as new information)

On top of just being visually delightful though, I know we knew religion was gonna be a fairly big part of this one, but I didn't actually expect to get quite this much of it - though I'm glad of it for a number of reasons. The BF twitter already made the ineffable joke so I don't have to, but also yeah I did very much spend all of season 2 episode 4 of good omens half convinced Samuel Barnett & Dervla Kirwan were about to pop up around any given corner (if you will go around being gay supernatural and horrible at your messy bureaucratic jobs in midcentury soho then I'm sorry, this is where my brain's gonna go) - so, fuel to that fire. But in terms of actual important things, at least one of my Soho wishes looks to be being granted because we have a Rev Edward Folgate on the cast list, which must mean we're finally meeting Norton's father, even if his mother & brother don't appear (which they could, technically, I've definitely seen BF not list all the doublings on their cast tabs before). Religion, domesticity, and the nuclear family are all things that absolutely fascinate me when it comes to Norton's character, so getting any amount of story involving his father & his church is something I've been actively hoping for for a long time now.

(I will say I'm a tiny bit bummed Saffron Coomber isn't on the cast list to play Mia again, but I kinda figured she wasn't going to be since Greg Austin's Armitage, who's making his first recurring appearance after originating in Unbegotten, was listed ever since the boxset was announced - presumably if she was also returning, that would've been handled in the same way. But since Unbegotten ended with Lizbeth and Mia going on a date, I still held out hope. Who knows though, maybe things did go well for them and Lizbeth just has a better work/life balance than Norton so she can date someone without them getting dragged into every scifi plot. I know that's not a very common accomplishment for any Torchwood agent, but a gal can hope)

At this point I know I'm completely in the realm of speculation & even wishful thinking, but I'm really really hoping we get some more clues as to Norton's overall timeline in this one, and I have a feeling that even if there's nothing as direct as dates given, the events of a plot like this one are going to heavily influence my personal interpretation of it.

To say that life & death are major themes for the soho crew feels wildly reductive, but even by Torchwood's standards and taking into account its origins as a piece of media with Jack Harkness & his newfound immortality at the heart of it, the living/dead status of this bunch has always been fantastically up in the air to me. Obviously Ghost Mission introduced Norton as kind of a ghost before revealing more obvious ghostly characters later on to which the title might have been referring, but his being from the past did beg the question of his survival into Torchwood's present era all the same, which Outbreak later alludes to much more directly, and his habit of showing up via hologram in multiple stories only further obfuscates any certainty we might have about where & when he definitely can be said to be alive and well. Then you've got Lizbeth and Gideon both being effectively 'brought back to life' via paradoxes that prevented them ever having died in the first place. Again, they are very very far from being the only Torcwhood characters this happens to (for a sprawling EU, it's really rather impressive how often & in how many different ways Torchwood as a whole manages to circle back to being about like. chaotic undead queers at the end of every day. though I suppose that consistency is part of why I keep falling in love with its different iterations again and again). That's without even getting into the question of Norton's dubious fate in God Among Us - and I say dubious because I know some people take that to be his ultimate death, but I personally think that reading something as vague as that as having any kind of finality rather goes against the spirit of this whole world/series, not just because I want him to live. (There are obviously other ways to make him survive/reappear, but I don't see this as a River Song scenario where we can safely assume one of his earlier-released adventures had to happen at the end of his personal timeline). But wherever God Among Us falls for him, he does very much meet God in it - or at least, a god, since the sentinel in Unbegotten is also described as a god of sorts, and even if he doesn't ultimately have the status of the god Jacqueline King is playing there, Unbegotten is still full to bursting with ghosts/undead/came back wrong/echo characters to continue underscoring that life/afterlife theme.

So all things considered, even allowing for the fact that we know Norton's twin hobbies are lying about himself and abusing time travel to suit his own ends/ever-shifting alliances, I find it difficult to believe we could get through a whole 6-part boxset about religion & death without something providing some kind of compelling evidence about where this adventure fits in among his other run-ins with apocalypses and gods and ghosts and dead-but-still-here characters/creatures, so I'm very much looking forward to any further exploration on that front.

And lastly, and least intellectually, I really want to know what the hell 20th-century Torchwood's obsession with Reginalds is. Reading through the cast list, I had to do two separate doubletakes over the character 'Sir Reginald Peebles' - firstly, because I had Reginald Rigsby on the brain, this being Soho (and the other Troughton brother being so active on BF's releases for this same month) - and secondly, because reading this in conjunction with the announcement for the July monthly adventure in which the new main Torchwood guy of the 20s is apparently called Sir Reginald Dellafield, there was a brief moment where I took that monthly release to be a tie-in with Ascension. I don't expect it to be, but damn. was it really so popular a name?

anyways, catch me thinking about those stained glass windows for the next couple months I guess (and knowing Torchwood Soho, for a long long time after it comes out as well lol)

[recallthename]

.

[theygender]

I finally got up the nerve to ask my spanish professor if I could use the nonbinary pronoun elle in class and I was worried the answer would be no since it's not an official pronoun, but he said yes! I got to use the correct gendered words for myself on my test today, and I didn't know just how much gender euphoria writing out the phrase "cuando era niñe" and ending my adjectives with -e was gonna give me but I'm gonna be happy for the whole rest of the day now. I'm also glad bc like... now if any other nonbinary students want to use a pronoun that matches their gender in their spanish class it should be easier for them. I've already done the hard part of coming out to my professor at a community college in the bible belt, explaining the movement for a gender neutral spanish pronoun to him, and providing him with resources from a spanish LGBT organization. And I let my pride club know what he said so now if any other students ask the organizer about using nonbinary pronouns in their spanish class she'll be able to tell them that the prof is okay with it 💛

[diseaseriddencube]

[tvckerwash]

ah yes I've been reminded about how much I dislike wash's arc with locus on chorus because it makes no fucking sense!

like that scene in s12 where wash has that dream about shooting donut? while perhaps understandable when looked at in a vacuum, it makes absolutely no sense in the context of wash's arc from s6-s10.

wash repaid his debt to donut by protecting him from one of the tex bots in the 100 tex battle (which is what that seemingly random line in that fight where wash says "okay, we're done here" is referencing), and wash mentally justifying shooting donut in the dream with a "I was just following orders" also makes no sense because that's not what happened!

pretty much everything wash did from mid s7 through s8 were all things that he chose to do. wash chose to go to the chairman and make a deal after he found out that caboose still had epsilon, wash chose to shoot donut and lopez (because he didn't know them and had no attachment to them), wash chose to take doc prisoner, etc etc.

yet despite all of those awful choices he made, the reds and blues still refused to let him die. they chose to save wash when they had every reason to not save him, and they did it because that's what friends do—they protect their own.

this is why wash pulling his gun on lina in s10, and the words that followed him doing so were so important. wash knew what she was feeling, he understood her on an intimate level because lina was mentally in the same place that he himself had been in not too long ago—but he was not going to stand by and watch her hurt his friends, and he was not going to let her force the reds and blues into a battle that wasn't theirs (like he himself had done in s6 on his quest to defeat the meta).

tldr; wash's arc on chorus with locus doesn't make sense because the whole point of his arc (and kind of lina's arc too) prior to chorus was unironically about rediscovering the power of friendship thanks to a group of dumb guys in colorful armor.

[darkclouds-rainsounds]

“Someday, I'll solve every riddle in the legends of Hisui's Pokémon. And on that day, I'll stand before Arceus at last— No, I will CONQUER it! No matter how many years, how many decades, how many centuries it takes me!”

Rambling Musing under cut

[Addition to this concept]

I can't have been the only person who thought of this; of Volo having died sometime not all that long after the battle at Spear Pillar and because of his excessive spite and hatred, he would come back as a Hisuian Zoroark. I have seen quite a few people do this concept with Akari where she ends up dying during her exile, but I haven't seen it done with Volo after Spear Pillar where he would be at his most vulnerable.

There was one person who had a similar idea whose username I can't remember nor care to, who had an idea (au concept???) of Volo having been a Zoroark the whole time who wanted a better world out of missing the way things used to be pre-human civilization (subtle way of saying he hates humans settling in Hisui and bridging the gap between themselves and pokemon).

Like, I know this is pokemon of all things, but considering the literal fact I made a psycho-analysis of Volo that would prompt practically everyone into going "It's not that deep", I always found it a little too perfect how if one is a believer of the hiker theory or just has any headcanon that he didn't die, that means Volo somehow survived the worst of what was to come after Spear Pillar.

After Spear Pillar, he was emotionally and mentally exhausted and very much not in his right mind because Arceus decided to be a jackass and summon the Azure Flute the moment the spooky plate made its way into the player's hands and set him off again after he calmed down. The anger; the rage and absolute vitriol he felt towards Arceus and still yet so, the player, was still relatively fresh and with his defeat and loss of his greatest ally in getting to Arceus (I mean, I get why he yelled at Giratina but also 🤨?????), that left very large room for recklessness and acting illogically.

Not only that, but with the likelihood that the clans and Galaxy team would catch wind sooner or later that he was the one who opened the rift and nearly destroyed the world by accident in the process then explicitly tried to do so again on purpose, he wouldn't be accepted in any settlement. This also applies to the Ginko Guild: they would want absolutely nothing to do with him once they find out as he'd be a blemish upon their reputation.

So you have a very bitter, very not mentally stable man trying to survive in the wilderness of Hisui almost entirely alone. It's a miracle that in terms of the hiker theory, he manages to survive past that, because the most likely thing that would have happened was him dying— like I can't convey to you just how lucky he was.

But this is ~pokemon~ so of course that didn't happen despite Volo being surprisingly realistic for a character. And to that I query, "what if it did?"

So here we are back at the beginning, Volo died and came back as a Hisuian Zoroark due to his overwhelming spite and hate.

How?

With what I've said previously, I decided that his death would be in the Alabaster Icelands. With there being very dangerous pokemon around, random holes in the ground with steep drops that can easily injure or kill you if you aren't watching where you're going, and deadly blizzards, death is guaranteed for the unprepared. Why would Volo go up that far north if it's so dangerous then— SHH SHUT! I am trying to convey an idea, the minute intricacies are lost on me right now. All I can imagine as of current is that Volo was in the Alabaster Icelands for one reason or another, something happened that was out of his and his pokemon's control and they couldn't save him (I'll tell you this: the cold on its own isn't what would kill him, otherwise his death wouldn't occur because he has his Arcanine.), and he came back as a Zoroark.

Part of the reason for the Alabaster Icelands is that I'm fairly certain? that only those who die— normal Zorua, Zoroark, or humans— there can become Hisuian Zoroark. If they die anywhere else regardless of the other criteria being met I'm pretty sure they can't become Hisuian Zoroarks, so Volo would have to be in the Alabaster Icelands for this to happen to him.

One can only imagine the grief his pokemon felt when they realized the oddly yellow Hisuian Zorua by their trainer's frozen corpse was their trainer. How they would feel that if they knew sooner or were out before it happened, his death would have been avoided. How Lucario, a pokemon that can sense aura, and his beloved Togekiss (because Gamefreak said fuck any visible notion his Roserade cares about him I guess), would instantly know that the Zorua was him.

Now,

for explanations on his appearance and his personality. Since I am unable to draw this digitally without it being immensely more difficult than it should be, I will have to heavily hint towards the symbolism since rarely ever do I draw or write something that is straightforward.

•His color pallette is still a lot like the normal Hisuian Zoroark, aka very white, but the typically red areas in a Hisuian Zoroark's hair and fur are instead the same blonde yellow as his hair from when he was alive. (White and yellow instead of yellow and white huh?)

•The eyes don't look as... narrow... as they should. Strange...

•Is it just me, or does this Zoroark not look as... wispy, as the others?

•Since I do not use color traditionally, I will have to say that the bulbous black areas on his arms and legs are supposed to be a dark red-brown and not a bright red. Hm, wonder why...

•He just has more scars because I personally headcanon Volo as actually having quite a few scars and had that directly translate into his Zoroark appearance.

And now for something lighter (by my standards atleast).

•Upon his becoming a Hisuian Zorua, he gained the ability to understand pokemon and speak with them on their level.

•It took a while for him to figure out how to talk human languages again (like pokeani meowth) and even longer to do so so it sounds natural and not... off (again, pokeani meowth)

•Very spiteful and angry little ball of fluff that simmered down faster than he would have in the even that he didn't die. Since, y'know, your death ultimately being caused by your hatred will make you reevaluate a few things about yourself.

•Loathed not having hands until evolving which only gave him three claws but it's better than useless bitty paws.

•Him calming down much faster and realizing how damaging he was being to himself and to his pokemon by tunnel visioning on figuring out how to usurp Arceus and seeing anything else that wasn't that as being in his way— provided much relief to his team that the person they knew and loved was coming back and not what he was twisting himself into in his downward spiral. (Again, this does happen when he lives, it just takes years rather than like... one)

•Took time to learn how to master casting illusions but the only illusion he can really even do at this point is of himself when he was alive. (Other Hisuian Zoroarks: able to do countless illusions of people and pokemon to varying degrees of accuracy. Hisuian Zoroark!Volo: can only do an illusion of himself but it's absolutely flawless)

•Wears his Celestica pendant at all times (forgot to draw it, don't want to deal with wrestling with my camera phone to retake the picture)

•He also wears his backpack and hat as well; they're not part of the illusion (didn't draw them since I 1. don't know how to draw either and 2. wanted him to be as unobscured as possible)

•He can still be the hiker, it's just that he's a ghost rather than immortal. Yes, his friendly, charismatic demeanor has returned despite him being like this now but there is the difference of a layer of somberness underneath and an even thinner layer of well-concealed vitriol towards Arceus and Arceus alone. (If you've read my post on Quincent and how I interpret Banettes, the same principal of spite functioning as fuel for a flame applies to Hisuian Zoroarks as well. However it is a bit different in that where a grudge functions as the fuel for Banettes animation, spite functions as the tether for Hisuian Zoroarks not moving on in the afterlife. It could be considered "unfinished business" but it's not really the same)

•Yes, this also means his illusion was changed to be that of what he would look like as a hiker rather than when he was in the Ginko Guild (he had figured out that illusion a long time ago since him being mistakenly affiliated with the Guild would be bad and eventually the uniform would become outdated as the Guild would no longer exist in the state it did when he was still alive at the least and would cause people to look at him weirdly)

•Had to get really good at not responding and talking to pokemon or else he garner unwanted attention.

•Can maintain the illusion through being touched so long as he anticipates it, otherwise he kinda just goes poof.

•The illusion obviously goes away when he's asleep and starts to wane when he's tired.

•He maintains the illusion for as long as he can upon awakening but it is incredibly draining on him to focus on maintaining it for such a long stretch of time that he does end up tired far quicker than if he simply didn't do it for so long or so often.

•Can also partially cast the illusion and look uncannily inhuman. +The illusion starts to wane when he's experiencing strong emotions since he can't focus on maintaining it and it's kinda terrifying to see some guy slowly be engulfed in billowing smoke with no known source out of nowhere and watch his features warp and shift into something very much not human.

•His moveset does not contain bitter malice by the time of pokemon platinum.

(•Just for those wondering, no he doesn't blame Akari/Dawn in any way for his death and very much acknowledges it to be no one's fault but his)

•There is also the question of "if Volo is Cynthia's ancestor but he died before he could have children, does she just not exist?" and the answer is: she still does, but she's Cogita's direct descendant now and not Volo's. (wtf is up with Celestica genes? Yeah a lot of the other characters in PLA have descendants that look almost identical to them, but with Cogita, Volo, and Cynthia, we have three people from a single bloodline that have MANY generations between them— that is, if you headcanon Cogita as being Volo's ancestor— and they hardly look any different. WHAT THE FUCK ARE THEIR GENES??? Also forgot about Cynthia's sister who doesn't have a canon design but if Cynthia is any indication...

•Ghost types have the ability of distinctly knowing something's up when he's casting the illusion of himself and basically look at him like '🤨'. Kinda difficult to keep a straight face when a swarm of gastly are just staring unblinkingly at you like "tf is this". +Normal living Zoroarks can instantly tell that he isn't human and get the wrong idea thinking he's trying to trick someone rather than him clinging to the humanity he had.